


Shadows

by Zaffie



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, May Secretly Has Real Feelings, My Tags Suck When I Try To Be Serious, Serious Story, Skye And Simmons Are BFFs Okay, Skye's In Pain, Sorry Skye, There Will Be Sadness, Ward's Being All Dramatic And Stuff, be warned, much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-13 08:22:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1219273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaffie/pseuds/Zaffie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Skye's drawn into an undercover mission that she was never supposed to be involved in, things go horribly wrong. Ward is struggling with feelings all over the place. Can the team pull together for their rookie agent or will the ridiculous stream of emotion drive everyone apart?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing too many fics lately. I don't really know what my excuse for this one is, except that I found something in my 'Miscellaneous' folder titled 'IDK about this Skyeward' and I opened it and found the first three sentences for this. And then the fic went on to do something completely different and happy with them, but I thought 'screw this, 1x13 and the month-long break has put me in an angsty mood' and so I decided to write angsty things.
> 
> I imagine this to take place after 1x12 and sort of without 1x13 happening. None of my fics really fit properly into the canon, though.

Skye doesn’t know how she got here.

     She’s sitting on the tiled floor and leaning against the side of the bath. Her sleeves are rolled up to her elbows, and her head is lolling loosely. The bath is full. There’s blood dripping into it, and she tries to watch the patterns that the red makes, swirling through the water, but her eyes won’t focus.

     She doesn’t know where she is. Her jeans are unbuttoned and her head feels heavy. There’s a pain beneath the skin of her chest. Voices swirl around her, disembodied, echoing, blank.

     Oh, god, she’s going to throw up. She lurches forward and has a brief coherent thought – she doesn’t _want_ to be puking in a bath – but then it’s gone and she’s not even really sure who she is anymore. Is she underwater?

   Her shirt is checked red and white and blue. It’s flannel. Skye thinks maybe the red wasn’t there this morning. She takes a deep breath, and tries to stand. It’s no good. Her legs are crumpled beneath her, in the pools of blood and water. The front of her shirt is wet. Her head is nodding.

***

May grabs the guy by his throat and slams him up against the wall. “Where is she?” the woman growls. The guy wheezes out a laugh through his narrowed windpipe and doesn’t answer. May tenses her jaw. “Ward,” she says, “go and look upstairs.”

     He could stay with May, like Coulson told him to. He could stop her from killing this guy.

     Ward runs up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He kicks doors open and glares into rooms, yelling Skye’s name. There’s no answer. Somewhere behind him, he hears a gunshot, and then May comes up the stairs.

     “Keep looking,” she says bluntly when she sees that he’s not with Skye.

     “Coulson said,” Ward manages to get out, but May fixes him with a look so searing that he shuts his mouth again and doesn’t finish the sentence. It’s obvious that she doesn’t care about Coulson’s order to leave everyone in the house alive.

     They force themselves through two more doors and then they reach the one at the very end of the hallway. May holds up her hand. “Wait.”

     Ward stands in silence. There’s an echoing drip of water from within the room – the bathroom, then, he thinks. The noise must have spooked May, and he takes the chance to marvel at how acute her senses are.

     “All right,” May says eventually, and then she pushes the door open. The hinges squeak but Ward barely hears them. His whole world has narrowed down to encompass only what he sees in front of him.

     Skye is sprawled on the bathroom floor. Her eyelids are fluttering, not quite closed, and her breathing is fast and shallow. Her shirt is covered in blood and water. It’s missing several buttons. One of her boots is lying in the shower, she’s wearing the other one, and her hair fans out around her head like a halo. The bath is full of blood.

     “Skye,” Ward says. She opens her eyes and looks right at him, and there is not a hint of recognition in her face. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so petrified in his life.

     May kneels down beside the girl. “Skye, can you hear me?”

     Skye’s fingers twitch, searching. May moves to take Skye’s hand and grip it firmly. She brushes her hand over the girl’s forehead and Ward thinks he has never seen May this open before. It feels raw, a private moment that he shouldn’t be witnessing.

     Where is all the blood coming from? His eyes trace Skye’s form. He finds cuts on her arms, deep ones, but surely that doesn’t account for all the blood. There’s so much of it.

    “Help me get her up,” May says bluntly, and Ward hurries to do as she says, hauling Skye to her feet. She wobbles and her knees knock together.

     “I’ve got her,” he tells May, and he scoops Skye into his arms. She sighs and her head rolls back and forth against his shoulder.

***

Skye doesn’t want to be here.

     She fights to walk, but her limbs ignore her. She doesn’t understand what she’s seeing – high ceilings, shining chandeliers, gold filigree trailing up the walls. They go down stairs and one of her hands brushes the spiralling golden bannister. There’s blood at the bottom, and her stomach lurches.

***

Ward pauses at the bottom of the stairs to examine the man that May killed. He doesn’t have a time to get a closer look, though, because Skye convulses in his arms.

     “May?” he calls. She’s still upstairs, but she comes running down towards him, and that’s when Skye vomits blood all over Ward.

     May absorbs it all in an instant, and touches Ward’s back. “Hurry,” she says. “We need Simmons.”

     Now he knows where all the blood in the bathroom came from. His bloodied shoes skid on the tiled floor. Skye moans weakly as Ward runs forward, and he’s probably hurting her with his bouncing motion, but all he can think about is getting her back to the Bus, where she’ll be safe.

     Moving swiftly, the three of them hurtle out through the front door of the mansion. May pauses to punch a security guard in the throat and he goes down. Ward just keeps running. He gets to the SUV and realises that he can’t open the door with Skye in his arms, dances anxiously from foot to foot until May comes up to help.

     He should put Skye in the back seat alone, he thinks as May runs around to the driver’s side. Somehow, though, he can’t bear to leave her. He climbs into the back still holding her in his arms. He lets her sit in his lap and doesn’t bother with his seatbelt. “Drive,” he says to May, and she drives.

     Skye’s nose starts bleeding on the way back. She has a coughing spasm which lasts for several minutes and red trickles out of her mouth. Ward is covered in blood.

     May must have radioed ahead, although he didn’t hear her. Simmons is waiting on the ramp and she draws in a sharp breath when she sees Skye, but she’s a professional even in a crisis. “Bring her into the lab,” she says to Ward. “Quickly.”

     He carries her in there, banging her feet on the doorway in his haste. Oops, he thinks, and then Simmons sweeps a pile of probably expensive equipment off one of the benches and he puts Skye down, gently, cradling her head so that it doesn’t thump to the metal.

     Simmons is beside him in a second, shouldering him out of the way. She pulls Skye’s eyelids open and shines a light in her eyes, and then she looks at the blood dripping from Skye’s mouth and nose. “Sit her up,” she tells Ward. “I’m worried she’ll choke.”

     Ward climbs up onto the table behind Skye. He lifts her by her shoulders and holds her so that she is reclining back against him. She’s barely breathing. Simmons grabs a needle and plunges it into the crook of Skye’s elbow, pulling blood out. She puts her fingers to Skye’s wrist, and then throat. She takes Skye’s blood pressure. She runs the syringe of blood over to the other side of the lab and then she comes back and examines the cuts on Skye’s arms.

     “Is she hurt anywhere else?” Simmons asks, and Ward is forced to admit that he doesn’t know. “Help me get her clothes off.”

     “Are you sure I should be in here?” Ward asks nervously.

     Simmons fixes him with a steely-eyed glare. Even though she’s half his height when he’s sitting on this table, she scares him. “Ward. Unless you have some weird _kink_ that makes you attracted to people who are sick and covered in blood and in this… state, then I suggest that you stay and help me hold Skye up.”

     He stays. Simmons unbuttons the rest of Skye’s shirt and gently slides it off her arms. Ward leans Skye forward to pull the shirt away from her back, and then Simmons moves gentle fingers over Skye’s skin. There are scratches down her spine. “They’re superficial,” Simmons says.

     “There’s a puncture mark here,” Ward reports, touching Skye’s elbow.

     “I did that,” Simmons says in exasperation, “when I took her blood.”

     “No,” Ward corrects her. “Look at the bruise. This is older.”

     Simmons looks more closely and sees what Ward sees. The second mark, from a second needle. She swallows hard. “I would have missed that.”

     “It’s okay,” Ward tells her. “You’re doing fine.”

    She looks up at him and her eyes are blank and red with the tears that she’s been holding back. “I can’t do this.”

     Where on earth is Fitz? Ward knows that he’s useless at this people stuff – hell, he’s been told that more times than he cares to remember. What is he supposed to say to Simmons now?

     “Simmons,” he begins, and hesitates. “Skye… she needs you right now.”

     It seems as though he’s done something right. Simmons straightens her shoulders, sniffs and wipes the back of her hand across her cheeks, and then she reaches for the back of Skye’s bra. Ward watches as she unclasps it, easily, and he feels nothing but fear. He does look away as Simmons checks Skye’s breasts for wounds. It’s not out of embarrassment or arousal, but respect.

     “Lean her forward again, Ward,” Simmons says, and he does so. The shorter woman slips a hospital gown over Skye’s head and then the machine in the corner beeps and she hustles over to it.

     Ward strokes Skye’s hair. His fingers run down the delicate shell of her ear and land on her shoulder. “It’s okay,” he tells her, in case she can hear him. “You’re safe.”

     The scientist returns and she looks exhausted. “There’s a cocktail of drugs in Skye’s system,” she says angrily. “Ward – I don’t think she was made. I think she was roofied.”

     “You’re kidding me!” Ward exclaims. “She wasn’t even drinking.”

     “She must have had something,” Simmons says sternly. “She was impaired by something she took orally, and then whoever did this to her injected her once she was down. They’re high-class drugs. I don’t even recognise all of them.”

     “It was a rich party,” Ward says numbly. “It makes sense that they’d have access to designer stuff.”

     Simmons nods. “That’s what I thought. Listen-”

     “But what about all the blood?” Ward interrupts quickly. “Why is she bleeding?”

     “I think she’s having an allergic reaction to one or more of the drugs,” Simmons explains. “I’ll know more soon, but listen, Ward, go and get May.”

     “What? Why?”

     She touches his arm as she speaks, her voice gentle, sympathetic even. “If Skye was drugged then there’s a possibility she was sexually assaulted. I’ll need to do an examination, do you understand?”

     He understands. He feels sick to his stomach. “I’ll get May.” At the door of the lab he pauses, and looks back at Skye. She’s small and pale and her face is covered in blood. “Simmons?” He can hardly get the words out. “Will she live?”

     Simmons turns her face away before she speaks, so that a curtain of hair swings down and hides her from Ward. “I don’t know.”

     Ward stumbles out into the cargo bay and hollers for May.

    


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually more-or-less my first time writing Coulson and May as more in-depth characters - I'm usually too scared to touch them with a ten foot pole, so please let me know how you think it's going!
> 
> More angst be around in this chapter, but I feel like the team are doing much good bonding. Hopefully we get a chance to see them functioning somewhat like this in the next episode, before they turn Skye over to a SHIELD hospital or something!

“Jemma,” May says gently. 

     It makes her jump. She looks up at May, feeling guilty and slightly confused. The older woman doesn’t often use first names. “What’s the matter?”

     “You need to sleep,” May says.

     Jemma has been awake since 7 AM. She doesn’t know how long ago that was, but it’s been fourteen hours since Skye was brought into the lab. She’s probably been awake for at least twenty-four hours by now. “I can’t leave Skye,” she tells May.

     May sits down on one of the high stools beside Jemma. They’re both facing Skye, who’s lying on the lab table with a blanket over her. “Yes you can,” she says.

     “I can’t!” Jemma insists, and to her dismay, she feels herself start to cry. “I’m sorry,” she sobs to May as tears pour down her cheeks. “It’s just because I’m tired; I’m usually much more stoic than this.”

     “Skye’s not going to die just because you take your eyes off her,” May murmurs. “I’ll stay with her. Go and sleep, Simmons. Get a couple of hours rest at least. You’re no good to anyone like this.”

     It’s harsh, but it does the trick. Jemma climbs out of her chair, squeezes Skye’s hand, and fumbles her way out of the lab. Halfway up the stairs from the cargo bay she pauses and turns back, realising that she’s forgotten to ask May to call her if Skye’s condition changes at all. She moves silently to the lab door, and then she sees May’s back.

     The woman is bent over Skye where she lies on the table and she’s whispering something that Jemma can’t hear. Her hand gently strokes Skye’s hair and then she leans forward and presses a kiss to the younger woman’s forehead.

     Jemma can’t bring herself to interrupt. She has never seen May like this before, and it feels personal and far too intimate for her to interrupt. She turns away and moves quietly back up the stairs.

     Ward accosts her as she reaches the top. “Simmons,” he says urgently. His hair is sticking up and his eyes are wild. He’s babbling, “I fell asleep, I’m so sorry, I was just tired and there was this guy with a knife-”

     She holds up a hand to stop him. Her eyes feel as though they’ve been rubbed in sand. “Ward, are you saying that you got hurt?” He nods guiltily and she sighs. “Go down to the lab. Stitch yourself up or get May to do it – I can’t right now.”

     “I didn’t mean to leave Skye,” he says miserably.

     “She’s not going to die just because you’re not there,” Jemma says, recalling May’s words to her earlier.

     “She’s okay, then?”

     “The same as before.”

     “And the… examination?”

     “Nothing physical,” Jemma sighs. “We won’t know any more than that until she wakes up.”

     Ward nods and charges past her, down the stairs.

***

May is sitting bolt upright on her stool when he comes in. Her hands are folded neatly in her lap.

   “Hi,” Ward says. He can’t help feeling a burning resentment that she’s just _sitting_ there, not touching Skye or anything. She should be trying to comfort the younger agent, he thinks.

     “What do you want, Ward?” she asks without turning around.

     “Nothing,” he says defensively, stung by the boredom and exasperation in her tone. “I just need to stitch myself up. Simmons sent me down.”

     May twists her head to look at him now. The wound is high on his left shoulder, and he barely noticed it all night, too caught up in adrenaline. Moving slowly, he crosses to the workbench and grabs one of the hooked needles. The thread is in the supplies cupboard – he rummages for a while before grabbing it.

     “Would you like me to do it?” May offers, but she doesn’t sound particularly enthusiastic about making the offer – more duty-bound.

     “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Ward mutters back, and then he realises how sulky he’s sounding. “But, um, you would probably do it better than me.” There. An olive branch.

     May rolls her eyes, but she comes over and takes the needle and thread from him. Ward tugs his shirt off and she pours disinfectant over his wound before she starts sewing. Ward fixes his eyes on Skye.

     “I don’t think you should have killed that guy,” he says finally. The thought has been weighing on him all evening.

     May doesn’t answer for a little while, just focussing on what she’s doing. Eventually, she says, “You’re determined to always think the worst of me, aren’t you?”

     “What do you mean?” Ward asks, confused.

     “I didn’t kill him,” May says. “I’m a professional, Ward. I know how to follow orders.”

     “Then what… how?”

     “I shot him in the thigh,” May tells him. “When he wouldn’t tell me where Skye was. He passed out. He wasn’t dead.”

     In some ways, Ward thinks that maybe this is worse, because this means that May hurt the man for no reason. But then he looks back at Skye, at her small, pale, heart-shaped face, and he thinks that maybe he would have done the same. So now he feels like an idiot. Fantastic. He hops off the table and takes the needle away from May.

     “I think I’ve got it from here,” he says. “Thanks.” He heads out of the lab.

     When he reaches the door he turns. May is still facing him. She raises her eyebrows in her version of a shrug, and then she returns to sit by Skye’s side.

     Ward wonders if maybe he should have apologised to her. If he’d done that, perhaps she would have been more welcoming, not icy cold, and he could have stayed in there with her and Skye. Somehow, though, he just doesn’t feel as though he wants to be anywhere near May right now. He storms up the stairs with a needle still dangling from his shoulder.

***

“Jemma,” someone says gently. A hand brushes her hair away from her face. A mug of tea is wafted under her nose, and Jemma opens her eyes.

     “Fitz,” she says, undeniably happy to see him. “Oh look, you made tea!” She takes the mug from him and folds her hands around it, feeling the warmth sink through her. After a few sips, her brain becomes suitably aware for her to have a real conversation. “How long have I been asleep?”

     “About five hours,” Fitz says. “Not very long. May sent me to wake you up. She said you’d be unhappy if you slept for too long.”

     May was right. Jemma already feels guilty about leaving her patient. She throws the covers off and stands up with a sigh. No need to get dressed – she just fell into bed in her clothes earlier, even though they were covered in blood. “You haven’t been down to see Skye yet,” she notes to Fitz.

     He casts his eyes down at the floor. “I’m not sure I want to,” he confesses. “I feel like this is my fault, Jem. I let her walk into this mess. I was supposed to be monitoring communications and I didn’t – I just didn’t realise how quiet she’d gone until it was too late.”

     “It wasn’t too late,” she soothes him. “She’s alive. May and Ward got to her in time because of _your_ warning.”

     “I suppose so,” Fitz says. “Coulson and I only got back a few hours ago. I was so sure Skye was dead the whole time we were away, you know. I thought Coulson was going to kill us both, the way he was driving.”

     “Mm,” Jemma smiles. “Well, you know he’s desperate when he mistreats Lola, I guess.” She finishes the last drops of tea and then stretches her arms high above her head. “I’ll go down to Skye. You should come with me.”

     “Coulson and Ward are down there,” Fitz says nervously. “I don’t want to intrude…”

     “Don’t be silly, Fitz. You have as much reason to be in there as either of them. We’re all a family now.”

     He trails after her as she heads towards the stairs. On the way, they pass May in the conference room. She’s setting something up on the screen and Jemma pokes her head in.

     “Good, you’re awake,” May says calmly without looking at her.

     “Yes, thank you,” Jemma returns politely. She feels a bit awkward after her break-down earlier. “What are you doing?”

     “Trying to find out what happened,” May explains. “I’ve been using the wounds on Skye’s body and the information we have to work backwards.” She points to a section of the screen and says, “I figure that the scrapes on Skye’s back and the backs of her legs could come from her being dragged down this gravel path at the side of the house.”

     Jemma stares at the woman in surprise, and May turns around and gives her the hint of a wry smile. “How are you figuring all this out?”

     “I wanted to be a detective, when I was about your age,” May tells her. She sees the surprise in Jemma’s face and lifts her eyebrows. “What? Did you think my aspiration was always to be a secret agent?”

     “I – I guess I didn’t think,” Jemma stammers. “I’ll go down to see Skye now. Uh… keep up the good work?” She squeaks out the last sentence and then feels like an idiot, so she scurries away with Fitz on her tail.

     When they reach the bottom of the stairs, she remembers what she wanted to tell him. “Thank you, for the tea. It helped.”

     “Oh, that wasn’t my idea,” he says. “It was May’s. She told me to make it and bring it to you when I woke you up.”

     Jemma frowns, slightly confused – but then she remembers seeing how gentle and soft May had been with Skye earlier, and she wonders just how much of a secret heart is under the woman’s steely façade. “That was nice of her.”

     “Yeah,” Fitz agrees. “Yeah it was.”

     They walk into the lab.

***

Ward turns around when Fitzsimmons arrive. Simmons tries to smile at him, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Fitz just looks awkward.

     Coulson, sitting on the other side of Skye, doesn’t even lift his head. He’s been in here for the past four hours, ever since he and Fitz arrived back from their part of the mission. When things went wrong with Skye, May had pulled the Bus off the ground before they had a chance to pick Fitz and Coulson up. They’d had to circle around to the second meeting point, ten hours south of the first one (by flying car, that is) before they could reunite the team.

     “How long have you been with her?” Simmons asks Ward.

     He could say ‘since May left’, since that’s the truth, but instead he answers, “About three hours.” Simmons frowns, so he quickly says, “Coulson was here for an hour before that.”

     “May stayed for a couple of hours before me,” Coulson volunteers.

     “And I was here before May,” Simmons completes, piecing it together. “She hasn’t been alone, then. No one’s seen her wake up?”

     Ward shakes his head. Coulson doesn’t move, but his face twists into a grimace that suggests it’s too painful for him to reply. Simmons sighs.

     “All right. If you boys want to get some sleep-”

     “We’ll stay,” Coulson says firmly. “She deserves to have us with her.”

     There is nothing anyone can say in reply to that. Fitz and Simmons take up their own places around the table and all four of them sit vigil over Skye’s silent body.


	3. Chapter 3

That night, Ward sees Skye.

     She’s not sick in his dreams; she’s vibrant and laughing and dancing, hips swaying, hair flying, pulling him close with a hand wrapped in his shirt and pressing her lips to his.

     When he wakes up he feels guilty as hell. What kind of an ass is he to dream about his teammate like that while she’s lying downstairs in some kind of drugged stupor? He showers and makes breakfast and decides he won’t go down to see her, not until he’s sure that he’s forgotten the stupid dream.

     May strolls past him and he reaches out and grabs her arm. “Can we spar?”

     She gives him a once-over. “No.”

     “Why not?” Ward demands, suddenly irrationally furious with May. God, doesn’t she _care_ that he’s hurting? That he needs this right now? He flashes back to that night in the bar, with Skye, when she’d offered him a shoulder to lean on. He wishes more than anything that he’d stayed with her that night.

     “I’ve told you before,” May says, “I won’t fight you when you’re angry.”

     “I’m not angry,” Ward practically spits at her. She raises her eyebrows again and he wants to smack that stupid smirk off her face. He turns away from the woman in disgust and feels rather than hears as she walks away.

     Ward wants Skye. He wants her so much that it hurts, somewhere near the bottom of his ribcage. It aches and makes him double over in pain. God, _Skye_. She’d say exactly the right thing. He needs to hear her voice. He’s dashing down the stairs to the lab before he even knows what he’s doing, bursting through the doors and grabbing Skye’s shoulders.

     “Ward!” Simmons exclaims in shock.

     “Wake up!” he screams at Skye. “Wake up, damn you!” He shakes her violently. Her head flops back and forth limply and suddenly Ward feels sick. He drops Skye at the same moment that Coulson pulls him away and he falls to his knees and retches.

     “Pull yourself together,” Coulson snaps, and then he hauls Ward to his feet and leads him out of the lab. Ward barely registers where they’re going, but he does hear the sound of the SUV door opening as Coulson pushes him inside. “What do you think you’re doing?” his boss asks furiously.

     “I don’t know,” Ward says numbly. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

     “What the hell have you done, Ward?”

     Ward covers his face with his hands and doesn’t answer. In the darkness behind his eyelids he sees nothing but Skye.

***

Jemma is visibly shaken by what just happened. Fitz sees it in her eyes and her trembling hands as she checks and rechecks Skye’s vitals.

     “Did he hurt her?” Fitz asks.

     “I don’t – I think she’s okay,” Jemma tells him. “The same as before, anyway.” She turns so that her back is to him and places her palms on the desk, trying to hold herself up. “I don’t know what to do, Fitz. I don’t know how to fix her.”

     The team isn’t the same without Skye, Fitz thinks. He doesn’t know if they’d be like this if it was anyone else lying on that table, or if this feeling of having the heart of the team ripped out is specific only to her.

     “You’ve done everything you can,” he says to Jemma, because it’s what she needs to hear. “It’s up to Skye now. She’s a fighter.”

     “Oh, Fitz,” Jemma chokes out on a note somewhere between a sob and a sigh. “Her body’s shutting down. I don’t know if there’s brain damage or – or anything!”

     “It will be okay,” Fitz says, trying to sound upbeat. He doesn’t look at Skye. He can’t seem to will his eyes over to her body anymore.

***

The team is drowning. They’re all functioning on less than five hours of sleep, stressed beyond belief and spending every waking hour down in the lab, which is feeling more dreary and soul-sucking by the second.

     After the incident with Ward, Coulson orders them all upstairs to sleep. He thinks – well, he hopes – that it will help.

     “Sir, I really think I should be here with Skye,” Simmons tries to protest.

     “That was an order, Simmons,” he reminds her gently.

     May waits behind as everyone else goes upstairs. “I slept,” she tells him. “More than you did, Coulson. I’ll stay with her.”

     “It’s fine,” he says. “I’m good here.”

     May doesn’t argue, but she does sit down next to him. They stare at Skye.

     It takes an hour, but Coulson finds himself yawning. He sneaks glances at May to see if she’s noticed. She has. He pretends that he’s not falling asleep on his chair, but when his head falls to his chest with a jerk that wakes him up again, he can’t pretend anymore.

     “I’ll stay with her,” May says again, and he admits defeat and gets up to leave.

     “Wake me if she changes,” he says.

     “If anything changes, Coulson, the entire bus will be awake in seconds,” May says dryly. “You’re not the only one who’s asked me.”

***

They get a mission. Coulson argues while May stands silently at his side, but it doesn’t achieve anything. The team needs to follow up with an apparent case of levitation in Indonesia. May changes their course.

     “We don’t need you on this one,” Coulson tells Ward when they lands.

     Ward understands what he’s saying – at least, he thinks he understands. Coulson is giving him a chance to stay back and take care of Skye. Coulson’s trusting him.

     “I’ll take care of things here,” he promises.

     “I hope so,” the older agent says seriously.

     Ward walks into the lab as they all leave. He sits down by Skye’s side and holds her hand. “I’m sorry about before,” he says. “I guess I just got a bit carried away.”

     He imagines her reply. _That’s okay, Robot. I know you didn’t mean it._

     “You understand me,” he says. “You always have. It’s funny, because I don’t know a thing that goes on in your head.”

     _I’m a complicated girl,_ his mind tells him in Skye-voice. _You’re easy to read._

   “I guess so,” he laughs. “I punch the people I’m told to punch and get out when I have to.” He hesitates. “I thought I was good at solo missions, you know – but I’m not. Not anymore. I don’t think I can do this without you, Skye.”

     In a perfect world, she’d open her eyes and say, “Well it’s lucky that you don’t have to.” This world isn’t perfect, though, not even close. Skye doesn’t move. Ward’s breath catches in his throat and he leans forward and rests on Skye, burying his head beneath his arms so that all he can see is the fabric of her shirt. His eyes feel hot.

     “I just want-” he murmurs, and then he has to stop, because he doesn’t know what he wants.

     And then Skye rasps, “Are you talking to yourself, Ward?” and he pushes himself upright so fast that he falls backwards off the chair.

     “Skye? Oh, my god, Skye.” He’s mumbling her name like it’s the only word he knows as he gets to his feet and grabs her arm. Her eyes blink up at him, huge and dark and fathomless. “How do you feel?” he asks desperately.

     “Like crap,” she says honestly. “What happened?”

     “It’s okay. You’re safe now.” He pulls the blanket higher up her chest. “I can tell you everything once you’re on your feet again.”

     “Dude,” Skye tells him. “I need to pee.”

     Ward winces. “Uh, actually, there’s sort of a catheter… you’ve been out for a while.”

     “I’m going to murder Simmons,” Skye announces. “Right after I have a nap.” She closes her eyes, and then snaps them open again. “You’re going to stay here, aren’t you?”

     “Yeah,” Ward says, too relieved to care about the tears as they start running down his cheeks. “I’ll always stay with you.”

     “Are you crying? Ward, you big baby,” she snorts, and then she closes her eyes with a sigh of relief. Her fingers tighten briefly around his before they go limp as she drifts off into a natural, drug-free sleep.

***

By the time the rest of the team returns, Skye is awake again. She and Ward are talking quietly when everyone else rushes in, and for several minutes it’s just everybody talking. Nobody can really understand a word.

     “All right,” Skye says over the din eventually, and they all stop to look at her. “You all need to get out, except for Jemma, because I want her to get rid of all these ridiculous tubes so I can get up off this horribly uncomfortable metal table.”

     They file out of the lab and Ward climbs the stairs along with the rest of them. He can’t look at them yet, feeling as though he’s walking in a bubble, isolated from them all by the soapy walls. Skye’s the only one who can come inside. Maybe, now that she’s awake, he’ll be able to let the rest of the team back in.

***

“Do we have to stop being friends now?” Jemma asks in a rush as soon as they are alone together.

     Skye stares at her incredulously. “Um, what?”

     “Well, because I saw you naked,” Jemma explains. She twists her fingers together nervously. “It makes some people feel really awkward.”

     Skye rolls her eyes. “Don’t be stupid,” she says. “We’ll always be friends! Look, Jem – plenty of people have seen my naked in my life, and I’m still friends with, like, a bunch of them. And I like you more than anyone else I can think of, okay?”

     “Are you sure?”

     “Yes, I’m sure, idiot. I know that you didn’t see me naked just to perv, and I also know that it wasn’t anything you haven’t seen before. We’re both girls. Don’t freak out.”

     Jemma heaves a sigh of relief and says, “Okay.”

     “Can I get up now?” Skye asks.

     “If you hang on to me,” the other woman tells her.

     Carefully, Skye wraps an arm over Jemma’s shoulders and swings her legs out of bed. Her knees wobble, her head spins and there’s a black hole in her memory that she’s trying hard to ignore, but she’s standing. It makes her feel better – more like herself, now that she’s upright.

     “How long has it been?”

     Jemma thinks about it. “Nearly two days,” she says at last. “I was just starting to think you were dying.”

     “Me? No, never. I’m too cool to die,” Skye tells her confidently.

     Leaning on Jemma, she takes her first steps across the lab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Some of the awful angst is lifting! But Ward went a bit cray cray, so there will be some dealing with the fallout of that next chapter. Thankfully, we're now onto the recovery stage of the fic, which is good, because that's more fun to write. I was getting bored without Skye!


	4. Chapter 4

They quickly discover that Skye isn’t going to be able to walk up the stairs to the main part of the plane.

     “You could stay down in the lab,” Jemma suggests.

     “No,” Skye says firmly, because that’s the last thing she wants to do right now. “I just want to shower and then sleep. Not necessarily in that order.” It sounds stupid, because she’s been asleep for roughly forty-eight hours, if Ward is right, but she’s just so exhausted.

     “You can’t shower,” Jemma tells her. “You might fall and hit your head.”

     “So might you,” Skye retorts. “Or Fitz, he’s physically challenged. I bet that’s a danger he faces daily.”

     “You know what I mean,” her friend sighs, and Skye wrinkles her nose.

     “There’s blood in my hair,” she says, and then she corrects herself. “There’s blood _all over_ me and also I want to put on some real clothes. This hospital gown feels like paper. I’m wearing paper.”

     Fitz comes downstairs with pillows and blankets trailing from his arms. “Coulson suggested that you sleep in the SUV,” he tells Skye.

     She thinks about it for a second. “That could work,” she admits. “But _please_ can I have a shower?” Abruptly, her legs wobble and she falls to her knees. _Think fast,_ Skye tells herself. She clasps her hands in front of her. “Look, I’m begging,” she announces to Fitzsimmons. “On my knees and everything.” The concern eases off their faces and Skye breathes a sigh of relief. She can’t bear the idea of everyone treating her with kid gloves.

     “Sleep first,” Jemma tells her. “You can shower when you wake up.”

     They make a bed in the back seat of the SUV and Skye crawls into it, pillows fluffed up under her head and pressed along her side to support her back. “Just don’t drive off on a mission while I’m in here,” she says, and earns a chuckle from Fitz.

     Jemma slips into the front seat. “Go to sleep,” she tells Skye sternly. She looks exhausted, with bags under her eyes and everything, and Skye can tell that the biochemist is still freaking out about whatever happens. She wants to tell Jemma not to feel guilty, but her eyes close before she has a chance.

***

“What have you got?” Coulson asks as he walks into the briefing room.

     May spares him a brief glance, and then turns her attention back to the screen. “Skye arrived at the party in the main room, here.” She taps a spot on the virtual blueprints in front of her. “We found her over here, halfway across the property.”

     “So someone forced her there?”

     May shrugs. “Possibly. Only Skye knows how far she walked by herself – but we know she was talking to the bartender _here,_ ” she taps a spot close to the main room, “and Simmons suspects that was when she received the first dose of whatever drug they used. If we can narrow down who was there and then when they left-”

     “Melinda,” Coulson says gently. “I think you’re forgetting that this isn’t an official mission. If Skye wasn’t made as a SHIELD agent – if this was just someone’s sick idea of a good time – then we have no authority to hunt down the person who did this.”

     May’s shoulders hunch, just slightly, the way they do when she’s upset. If Coulson hadn’t been waiting for the sign he wouldn’t even have seen it. “She’s just a kid, and someone hurt her.”

     “I know. Believe me, I want to find them too – but you have to face the fact that we might not be able to.”

     The woman takes a deep breath, and then she straightens up. “We still need to know what happened. That is important to our mission, and possibly to Skye’s health.” She turns around and makes eye contact with Coulson for the first time since he’s walked in. “I’ll stop investigating this when someone tells me to stop.”

     He understands. “Don’t stay up too late,” he says gently, and then he leaves her to it.

***

When Skye opens her eyes, Jemma has turned into Ward.

     “Body morph,” she says before she’s fully in control of her faculties.

     Ward turns around from the front seat to stare at her. “What?”

     “Nothing,” Skye says quickly. “What time is it?”

     “Half-past one,” he says. “In the morning.”

     “Ouch,” Skye winces. “I’ve been asleep for twelve hours.”

     “Don’t worry about it,” Ward tells her. “I got shot in the side once. Bullet went between my ribs, lodged in my lung, and I had a six-hour surgery to remove it. I was recovering in hospital for a week and I think I was only awake for five minutes. It’s your body’s way of healing, that’s all.”

     Skye sits up and throws the blanket away from her body. “Can I have that shower now?”

     Ward presses his lips together. “I’ll have to help you.”

     “In the shower?”

     “I’ll close my eyes, if it helps,” he says.

     “Come on, then.”

     She plans to walk up the stairs, but somehow she can’t quite manage it. She ends up wrapping her arms around Ward’s neck and her legs around his hips and letting him piggyback her to the top. “Not a word to the others about this,” she says forcefully as they get into the bathroom.

     “Not a word,” he agrees.

     “Pinkie swear.” She holds out her hand. They lock fingers. “Good.”

     Ward starts the water running and Skye carefully unlaces her hospital gowns. She’s wearing two, one on backwards, so that she doesn’t flash everybody as she walks around.

     “Okay, get in,” Ward says, and then he turns around and he’s looking straight at her.

     Skye’s breath catches in her throat. To his credit, the man is staring right at her eyes, and then he closes his and holds out a hand. Skye grabs it, leans on him as she manoeuvres into the shower. She has to let go of Ward as she gets under the stream of water and suddenly she finds out just how unsteady her limbs are. She fumbles for the shower wall, catches one of the taps, hangs on desperately.

     “Um, Ward?”

     “Yeah?”

     “You might need to, uh, to come in here.”

     He doesn’t say anything, just steps into the shower. His eyes are still closed, and he has all his clothes on. The water soaks them instantly, as well as his hair, which flattens against his forehead, making him look much younger. Skye clings to his broad arm and puts her head back so that the drops thunder onto her face. Blood streams from her skin onto the tiles and down the drain. The water stings in her cuts and scrapes.

     Ward hands Skye the shampoo when she asks for it, and then the conditioner. When he reaches for the conditioner back, his hand fumbles against the skin of her stomach. They both pretend they haven’t noticed, even though Skye shivers at the touch. She washes her hair out and starts feeling better almost at once when it hangs down her back, smooth and heavy and finally clean.

     While she’s in here, she takes the chance to look over her body. She can feel scrapes on her back and when she twists around she can see them on the backs of her thighs. It feels like she’s been sliding naked down a rock formation, or something. The cuts on her arms make her pause. They’re slashes across her wrists and forearms, and they look like they were deep. Jemma has done something to them which has made a tough little skin grow over, like a Band-Aid. In the back of her mind, Skye almost remembers what happens. She can see a blade touching her skin – and then she doesn’t want to remember anymore, and she pushes the thoughts away.

     “Okay, Robot,” she says when she’s finally done. “I’m getting pruney. Time to get out.” She twists off the taps and hangs onto Ward’s shoulder as he steps out of the shower, then she reaches for a towel and wraps it around herself. “You can open your eyes.”

     He blinks down at her. “Do you want to go to your bunk? You can get some clothes there before I take you back downstairs.”

     “Why can’t I just sleep in my bunk?” Skye protests.

     Ward makes that face he makes when he’s trying not to tell her something, so she punches him in the chest.

     “Hey,” he says, but his heart isn’t really in the admonishment. She glares at him. “Okay, fine. Simmons just really wants you to be near the lab for a while, that’s all. She doesn’t like the idea of someone having to rush up and down the stairs with medicine, or carry you down if you have another… episode.”

     “That’s stupid,” Skye says, but she feels a twinge of worry deep inside herself. She hates drugs – hates the way that they manipulate your body and mind without your permission. She’s always felt that way about them; alcohol too, although that won’t stop her drinking. It makes her skin crawl just thinking about what might have happened to her. She wants to be safe. “Fine, then. If it makes you guys happy.”

     They go to her bunk and Skye changes (while Ward stands with his back to her) into a pair of soft sweatpants and a loose t-shirt. She picks up a bra and looks at it, then puts it down with a snort of disgust, because she’s too tired for bras. Bras are stupid.

     “What?” Ward asks.

     Skye thinks she’s getting tired again, if she said that out loud. “Never mind.”

     “Come on,” he says. “We’ll go back down to the SUV.”

     He carries her down the stairs again and opens the door of the car for her like she’s some kind of princess. Skye doesn’t feel like she deserves this treatment. He even goes so far as to tuck her in, wrapping the blankets snugly and securely around her shoulders. “Okay?”

     “Okay.”

     He climbs into the front seat and presses the button to recline it as far as it will go. Like this, they can almost look at each other.

   “Ward?” Skye asks quietly after a few minutes in which she can’t bring herself to even try and sleep.

     “Yes, Skye?”

     “Thanks,” she tells him. “For, y’know, letting your clothes get all soaked and everything.” He hasn’t had time to change, she realises. He’s just sitting there in wet clothes. “You can go upstairs and sleep or change if you want.”

     “I’m not going to leave you,” he responds bluntly. “Nothing you can do or say will make me leave you.”

     “Okay then,” she whispers. Finally, she feels safe enough to close her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I feel like this fic has a few more chapters left in it, but I want to know what everyone else thinks. Is it getting tired? Has it reached a conclusion? Is the plot worth the next few chapters explaining what happens to Skye, or are you too bored? :D
> 
> Mind you, no one could be bored of Skyeward, am I right?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how good this chapter is, because I have a ridiculous fever and sinusitis that feels like a broken nose while I'm writing, so I might be slightly delirious. Let me know if it's rubbish, and expect it to be edited as soon as I'm well again!

Skye opens her eyes with a groan of pain and May swivels in the front seat instantly.

     “What was that?” the older woman asks accusingly.

     “What was what?” Skye tries.

     “Don’t play innocent with me. Where does it hurt?”

     Skye winced. “My chest.”

     “Ribs? Or lungs?”

     Skye shrugs, so May climbs over the space between the seats and sits next to her. “Tell me when it hurts,” she says, and then her fingers press gently and rapidly along Skye’s sides.

   “Ouch,” Skye says when May gets somewhere near the bottom. “Ow, ow, stop.”

     “I think it might be your rib,” May says, prodding harder.

     “Don’t do that.”

     “You were coughing a lot – maybe you fractured it.”

     Skye slaps May’s hand away and glares, but she’s not really angry. “I can get an x-ray,” she says.

     May looks at her with unusual sympathy. “Skye, I was wondering what you remembered about that night.” She holds up a hand to stall Skye’s protests, and adds, “I know it’s not comfortable to remember, but you’re safe here with us, and the past can’t hurt you.”

     Skye swallows hard, closes her eyes and tries to think.

***

_She’s not supposed to be in the mansion. She’s not dressed the part, but Ward had forgotten the USB and so they send her in. She storms up to him where he is chatting casually to May and slaps him, hard, in the face._

_“You absolute bastard!” she yells. “Coming out here with this – this_ floozy _and thinking I wouldn’t find out!”_

_“Whoa,” Ward protests urgently. “Hey, no, sweetheart, it’s not like that-”_

_“I want you gone,” Skye snaps. “Your things will be on the lawn by morning.” She turns to leave, and Ward grabs her arm, pulling her back._

_“Just listen,” he encourages._

_Skye tries to wrench her arm away from him. She struggles and slaps him on the chest, open-handed. The USB she’d been clutching falls neatly into his jacket pocket, exactly as if they’d rehearsed this scenario a thousand times. “Let go of me!” Skye shrieks, and Ward finally releases her and she runs down a corridor._

_It would make sense for her to leave now, but she takes a wrong turn, and before she knows what she’s doing she finds herself seated at the bar._

_“_ Just stay there, _” Coulson’s voice crackles in her earpiece. “_ If you leave too fast it might be construed as suspicious. _”_

_So Skye sighs, and stays on her stool. “Can I get a glass of water?” she asks the bartender._

_“You look like you need something stronger,” he says, half-laughing._

_“I wish,” she moans. “I’m on a ten-day cleanse and it’s only day seven.” The bartender slides her water down to her and she takes a sip, sighs, and begins to play the part of troubled girlfriend. She pours out all her woes and worries about Ward to the bartender until his eyes start to glaze over and he excuses himself to help another customer._

_Skye climbs off the stool, ready to leave. She’s about to say something to Fitz when her world tilts and she wobbles in dismay. What was that?_

_A guy grabs her elbow; she can’t see his face. “Are you all right?” he asks smoothly._

_“Ah, yeah, I think so,” Skye babbles. “Thanks, I’ll be fine.” She tries to pull her arm away from him, but he hangs on._

_“At least let me escort you to the car park.”_

_Feeling dizzy and nauseous now, Skye agrees._

***

“You never saw his face,” May said.

     “I don’t think so,” Skye whispers. She feels sick to her stomach. “God, he – someone – they actually drugged me.”

     “I know,” May says, unusually kind. “Skye, I promise I’m going to find whoever did this, and I’m going to make them pay.”

     “Thank you,” Skye whispers. “I’ll tell you if I remember any more.”

     “You will,” May assures her, and then she opens the door and leaves the SUV.

     Skye leans back against the seat with a sigh. She looks down at the cuts on her arms and curls her knees up into her chest. It only takes a few seconds before the tears begin to fall. She cries silently, from years of practice, keeping the sobs choked up inside. Her shoulders shake with the effort.

     The front door opens, and Skye holds her breath and swipes her hands rapidly across her face.

     “Skye?” someone asks carefully. She recognises Ward’s voice just as he adds, “Are you… okay?”

     “No,” she admits, and lets the tears fall. She’s glad it was Ward. Right now, he’s the only person she feels like she can show her weakness to.

     He crawls into the back seat next to her, much like May earlier, and takes her into his arms. She presses her head against his chest, hard. His heart thumps comfortingly underneath her. For a few minutes, Skye just cries, until her tears have soaked his shirt.

     “You know,” Ward says eventually, “I really screwed up a couple of days ago.”

     Skye sniffles. She wipes her eyes and looks up at him. “What did you do?”

     “I lost it,” he admits. “I sort of screamed at you to wake up and everyone thought I was crazy. I felt a bit crazy.”

     “Why did you want me to wake up?”

     He laughs at that. “Why wouldn’t I want you to wake up? Skye, you drive me up the wall, but there’s no one on this bus I’d rather talk to in a crisis.”

     “Same here,” she admits shyly, and then she frowns. “Well, except maybe Jemma, if the crisis is my crippling penis envy.”

     Ward laughs again and Skye feels the rumble deep in his chest. “I missed you,” he says heavily. He presses his chin into the top of her head.

     “It’s going to be okay,” Skye tells him, and maybe now she’s starting to believe it herself.

***

“Shouldn’t you be putting some kind of lead sheet over my babymaking bits?” Skye asks as Simmons positions the x-ray machine.

     “Skye,” the scientist laughs. “This is SHIELD. We’re not some cheap hospital, you know.”

     Ward leans in closer. “What she’s trying to say is that our radiation equipment is more easily focussed to a specific area, so it won’t leak out and poison anything else.”

     “You better hope you know what you’re doing,” Skye accuses the biochemist, “or in twelve years when I don’t have an adorable mini-me running around I’ll blame you.”

***

Later, when Skye’s been told that she has a fractured rib and there’s nothing she can do for it except rest, when Ward has gone with her to the SUV and passed out in the front seat, he dreams about a tiny version of Skye. She has Skye’s hair and eyes and brilliant smile, and she runs around the plane causing havoc. When he catches her, he sweeps her up into his arms and she calls him Daddy.

     Ward wakes up with his heart pounding. He turns around and stares at Skye as she sleeps in the back seat, and even though there’s barely an arm’s length separating them, he wants to be closer to her. Something has changed for him, over this past week, and now that he’s had to experience time without Skye he can’t ever let it happen again. He doesn’t want another single moment in his life where he can’t turn to her for advice.

     May opens the front door beside him. “You’d better get some sleep,” she says. “I’ll stay with Skye.”

     Ward clenches his fists and looks at the woman. “May,” he says, softly, “we need to talk.”


	6. Chapter 6

May is in the briefing room again as Fitz passes by. He pauses to ask how it’s going, because he thinks that’s polite.

     The woman looks up at him. “Skye walked to the car park,” she said, “and then I think she passed out. It was gravel, so I’d assume that’s what she was dragged over that caused the scrapes on her back and legs.” She gives Fitz a searching look, apparently deciding exactly how much he’s ready to hear. “I think they took her jeans off.”

     Fitz can’t help the way his hands twitch and fold into fists. He feels his Adams apple bob as he swallows. When he finally speaks, he puts all his effort into keeping his voice flat and calm. His accent probably helps. “Is that all you know?”

     “We’ll find the guy who did this,” May says. “Then I’ll kill him. You can watch, if you want.”

     “Yeah. Thanks.” He leaves the room when she turns her back and slips down the stairs to see Skye.

   He’s meant to be changing spots with Ward, to give the specialist agent a chance to sleep and leave Fitz watching over Skye. He really expects to find Ward dozing in the front seat and Skye passed out in the back, which is why he’s a little bit surprised as he gets closer to the SUV and hears voices. And giggling. Skye is _laughing_. Fitz can’t remember the last time he heard her laugh, which is weird, because it hasn’t even been a week yet since the party. Fitz thinks no one could blame him for creeping closer.

     “So? What happened?” Skye is begging, and when Fitz moves slightly he can see her through the window, sitting up in the back seat, hands on Ward’s chest for leverage, grinning at her SO.

     “Well, my brother was furious, obviously. He basically threw himself out of bed and chased us around the entire house – and the whole time he had this white beard, with bits of foam flying everywhere – he looked like Santa Claus! We were laughing so hard we could barely breathe.”

     “I am so distraught that I didn’t know you when you were younger,” Skye moans. “You sounded like such an awesome kid!”

     “It wasn’t always like that,” Ward tells her, and suddenly his voice is serious. “Those were the very early days. Afterwards… it changed.”

     Fitz feels like he’s eavesdropping. Slowly he backs away, creeping into the lab and closing the doors so that he can no longer hear their conversation.

***

“You know,” Skye says, “I actually really like the sound of Gramsy. Is that weird?”

     “Sometimes Gramsy is a bit like you,” Ward tells her. “The rest of the time she bakes cookies and gingerbread houses and yells at everyone in Italian.”

     “See, I definitely don’t do that.” Skye pauses and tucks her knees beneath her so that she’s curled into a ball at Ward’s side. He wraps an arm across her shoulders. “Hey, Ward?”

     “Yeah?”

     “Is it weird that I have no idea what my heritage is?”

     He shrugs. “I think everyone has some gap in their history.”

     “Right, but, look at me. Do I look Caucasian to you?”

     Ward looks at her. He doesn’t want to stop looking at her. “Not… exactly.”

     “I wondered if I was Mexican or something, but I don’t think so,” Skye says. “It’s always been the thing that bugs me the most, because people always ask me where I’m from and I’ve just had to say that I have no idea.”

     “I like your eyes,” Ward says. He winces almost as soon as the words slip out, but they’re gone and he can’t take them back. Isn’t this what he promised himself last night when he talked to May anyway? Absolute honesty from here on out.

     “Well thanks, Robot.” Skye touches the stubble on his cheek with curious fingers. “Coulson said I was found in China. Maybe I’m Chinese.”

     “Part-Chinese,” Ward suggests.

     “I like your eyes too, you know,” she smiles. “But mostly your cheekbones. They’re, like, crazy gorgeous. You could kill people with those.”

     Ward tugs his facial muscles until they’re blank and he says, “I have.”

     Skye grins, and her entire face lights up. She snuggles into Ward’s chest and presses her nose to his neck and asks, “Why are you being so nice to me?”

     This is it, Ward thinks. The perfect time. Time to tell her. Say the words. Say; _I love you_.

     Fitz yanks open the door of the SUV and the two of them pull away from each other on reflex. “Ward,” he says urgently, “Coulson really needs you upstairs.”

     Ward glares at the younger man, absolutely glares, and hopes that the full force of his wrath gets across. Still, he sighs, scoots across the seat and steps out of the car. “I’ll see you later, Skye,” he promises.

     “I bet you’re in trou-ble,” she sing-songs gleefully, drawing out the last word.

     “Shut up,” Ward says, but he’s laughing. He turns away and heads for the stairs. Something’s weighing him down as his feet climb, and it takes him a while to realise it’s disappointment. He’s disappointed. He really wanted to tell Skye. He has to tell _someone_ about this, or it’s going to drive him crazy.

***

Skye thinks Fitz might be asleep. She kicks the back of his seat and says, “Hey Fitz.”

     He snorts and jerks upright and mumbles, “What? I’m awake.”

     “Good,” Skye says smugly. “I gotta go to the bathroom.”

     Fitz groans. “Are you sure?”

     “Yes. Come on.”

     They climb out of the car together and Fitz holds her arm like she’s a little old lady. When they get to the foot of the stairs, Skye looks up and… whoa. There’s no way she can climb that – and Fitz probably can’t do a Ward and carry her up, either. But the scientist is looking expectant, as though he thinks Skye can manage it, and she doesn’t want him telling Simmons she’s not feeling good. She lifts her leg (ow) and sets it on the first step.

     Just as she’s preparing to grab the railing and haul herself up, Ward appears at the top of the stairs. “Fitz!” he calls, and then trips easily down the steps. “I think May might want to pick your brains – you know, for her investigation. I can stay with Skye.”

     “You’re supposed to sleep,” Fitz says, but he casts a quick sideways look at Skye and then shrugs. “Okay, fine. You gotta take her to the bathroom.”

     “I love how the private parts of my life are just getting tossed around in the open like I’m a toddler,” Skye says to no one in particular.

     When Fitz is gone she winds her arms around Ward’s neck. “Thanks,” she whispers, and, obeying some instinct she doesn’t yet understand, she leans forward and presses a kiss to the back of his ear.

     Ward yelps and squirms and almost drops her. Then he chuckles, and says, “Any time.”


	7. Chapter 7

That morning, the plane changes course, so suddenly and abruptly that everything inside lurches to the side as they swing around.

     Skye is jolted against Ward’s side by the movement, and he wraps an arm across her body in an effort to hold her still. Several pieces tumble off the chess board that they’ve perched in the back of the SUV.

     “Quick,” Skye exclaims, “grab them before we forget where they were!”

     “At least wait until we’ve straightened out,” Ward tells her.

     “You’re just jealous because I was winning,” she taunts him, and pokes her tongue out.

     “Your face will get stuck that way,” Ward warns, and he leans over and scoops up the chess pieces. He glances at them as they lie jumbled in his hands and says, “Let’s just start a new game.”

     “That’s not fair!”

     “You’ll only beat me again anyway,” he says, and it’s a sign of how far he’s come that he can admit that now with no embarrassment or sense of emasculation.

     “True,” Skye agrees.

     There’s a few minutes of contemplative quiet while Ward sets the board up again, and when he looks over at Skye he sees her tracing her fingers around the cuts on her arms. She’s been doing that a lot, lately. It’s starting to worry him, so he interrupts her musings quickly.

     “Did you know Coulson gave me the dad talk yesterday?”

     “What dad talk?”

     “The ‘you better be careful with my daughter, young man’ dad talk.” Ward smiles. “He wanted to make sure my intentions towards you were pure,” he explains mockingly.

     “Oh, I’m sure you have terrible, dirty intentions,” Skye teases. “I hope you didn’t tell Coulson that.”

     “No,” he laughed. “I think he was mostly worried after my… incident, before.”

     They lapse into silence again.

     “Ward?” Skye asks after a while.

     He says, “Skye?” at the same time.

     “You go first,” she tells him.

     Ward hesitates, but then he murmurs, “You remember what happened to your arms, don’t you.” More of a statement than a question, and Skye nods.

     “Yes,” she whispers.

     “Do you want to tell me?”

     She takes a deep breath, and then she says, “I did it.”

     Ward’s eyes go wide, and he pulls away to look at Skye more clearly. “You _what_?”

     “I cut my arms,” she repeats, and her eyes are downcast and shameful.

     “But _why_?” he asks desperately. He feels as though he’s underwater, or something. Everything around him is sluggish and shocking.

     “I think I was hallucinating, or something,” Skye says carefully. “I thought – I could see things on my arms. I was trying to get them off. I didn’t understand that I was holding the knife until the pain started.”

     Ward closes his eyes and sighs heavily. He opens them to see Skye’s wan, pale little face staring at him as though waiting for rejection, and so he reaches out and pulls her close again. “Skye,” he says. “Oh, Skye.”

     “I’m sorry,” she whimpers into his chest.

     “Don’t be,” he says firmly. “This is why you didn’t want to tell May, isn’t it?” She nods, and Ward strokes her hair. “Do you remember anything else that happened in the bathroom?”

     “Someone took my shirt off. They, ah,” Skye pauses and makes a helpless gesture with her hands. “I kicked them when they went for my bra – landed it in their balls through sheer awesomeness, I guess. They had a walkie talkie? It squawked, they ran off, I got dressed as best as I could.”

     Ward wants to tell her how sorry he is, but his throat feels choked up, as though the words are stuck somewhere. Instead, he kisses the top of Skye’s head. She lifts her face to him, eyes red from holding back tears, and he kisses her forehead. Then her temple, the top of her cheek, and then Skye rises up and leans in and he kisses her mouth.

     For a second or two, it’s just gentle, careful, almost. Then Skye reaches up and twines her fingers into his hair and pulls herself closer, as close to him as she can possibly get. Ward opens his mouth against hers and Skye climbs into his lap. His hands land around her waist, holding her close to him. She tilts her head sideways and her knees dig into his hips and everything is perfect.

     Ward doesn’t really know how much time passes like that, but he does hear the footfalls ringing out on the metal stairs and he squeezes Skye’s hip and she pulls away from him.

     Their foreheads are pressed together and Skye says, “Someone’s coming.”

     “Mm,” Ward agrees, not quite ready for speech just yet.

     She mutters, “I should probably get off.”

     “Yeah.”

     Neither of them moves.

     It’s Simmons’ voice which finally motivates them into action, calling out across the cargo bay. Skye slips down off his lap and shuffles away from him, to the other side of the SUV. Ward places the chess board between them and runs his fingers through his hair a few times. He glances up at Skye. Her face is flushed and her lips are red and when she grins at him her eyes light up.

***

“It’s just a blood test,” Jemma reassures her. “A routine thing.”

     Skye’s still distracted. She glances at Ward where he’s leaning against a bench on the other side of the lab and feels a smile well up inside her as she remembers what they did earlier. _Finally_. It feels like something she’s been waiting for forever, even though she can say with absolute honesty that she never thought about kissing Ward before today. He’s always seemed so aloof and untouchable; but now she has the memory of him with his hair messed up and his eyes dark, staring at her with an expression that was somewhere between hope and longing.

     “Skye?”

     “I heard you,” Skye says quickly. “A routine blood test. I’m feeling better, you know, Jem.”

     “I know,” Jemma says, and everyone in the room hears the unspoken _thank goodness_ at the end of her words. “It’s just to be safe.”

     Skye shifts on the cold metal of the bench she’s sitting on and asks why the plane’s course changed, just to give herself something to think about that wasn’t Ward. To her surprise, Jemma gives her an awkward look and doesn’t answer, changing the subject clumsily and prattling on about something else. Skye glances up and sees that Ward noticed the awkward avoidance too. He’s standing up straighter, eyebrows drawn together sternly.

     The scientist wanders off somewhere with her vial of blood, still talking a mile a minute, and Ward comes over and stands in front of Skye. She presses her foot to his thigh, idly, and reaches out to grab hold of a belt loop in his cargo pants, keeping him from moving away.

     “What was that all about?” she asks.

     Ward still looks frowny as he says, “I don’t know.”

     “Don’t look frowny,” Skye tells him, mostly because she’s proud of the new word she just concocted.

     His forehead smooths out straight away, although she can tell it’s taking a bit of effort on his part. “I’ll find out where we’re going,” he tells her. “Stay with Simmons.”

     “Yes, boss,” she smirks, and he taps a finger against her lips.

     “I’m still your SO,” he reminds her, and then he tries to walk away, so Skye wraps her legs around his legs and holds him still.

     “Quickly,” she whispers, and sits up straighter on the bench so that she can get her hand around the back of Ward’s head and pull him down to kiss her. It’s fast, because they both know it has to be, but it’s enough to cement the idea in Skye’s mind that what happened in the SUV wasn’t a fluke. It was real and it would continue to be real.

     “I’ll be back soon,” Ward says solemnly. His hand brushes down her shoulder and then he heads out of the lab and up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

     Skye leans back on her hands as Jemma comes back into the lab. The scientist glances around to make sure that they are alone, and then says, “What was up with Ward? He looked a lot… happier than usual.”

     Skye lets a slow, secret smile spread across her face. “I have no idea,” she lies, hugging her secret to herself like it’s the most valuable thing in the world.


	8. Chapter 8

“The first time you had sex,” Skye says wickedly, and Ward gasps. She feels it under her fingers, the flutter of his chest as he sucks in an astonished breath.

     “What is this, twenty questions?” He’s already told her his earliest memory, his first word, and what he remembers of his first day of high school.

   “Yes,” she explains smugly. “So?”

     Ward sighs, which is how she knows he’s going to tell her. “I was nineteen, she was a girl I’d been dating for almost two years. In her bedroom.” He grimaces. “Her sheets were pink.”

     “Ew, pink,” Skye agrees.

   “Your turn.”

     “I was fifteen, it was in the back of a pickup, and the guy was my foster brother. I’d been living with his family for maybe four months, and we hit it off straight away.”

     “That’s… young,” Ward notes. She shrugs.

     “I had daddy issues, I guess.”

     “My turn to ask a question,” he says, because apparently he’s figured out how the game works. “Do you sing in the shower?”

     “Of course!” Skye exclaims. “Doesn’t everyone?”

     “No.”

     “Oh. Well, I sing bad pop songs, mostly. The bathroom has great acoustics.” She pauses, and is just opening her mouth to ask Ward if he plays an instrument when the intercom crackles.

     “ _Buckle up,_ ” May’s voice instructs them all. “ _We’re landing._ ”

***

Ward unbuckles his seatbelt when the plane touches down. The SUV is magnetised to the bottom of the cargo hold, so they were as safe in there as anywhere. Now, though, he has to tell Skye.

     “Ward?” she’s asking. “What’s going on?”

     He takes a deep breath and tries to fix his mind in a happy place – where will they be in two months, when all of this is behind them? “May found him.”

     “Found who?”

     “The man who drugged you.” Ward swallows hard. “He was the head of security at the party; he’s in his late thirties and he lives in the north of France.” The party had been in England.

     “We’re in France now,” Skye guesses, and Ward is forced to nod. “What’s going to happen to him?”

     He wants to protect her from this – from all of it. “May’s going to beat him up.”

     “Are you going too?”

     Ward wishes he could go. He craves the feeling of that man’s face breaking and coming apart beneath his hands. “No. You and I are going to stay here.”

     “I want to talk to May.” She pulls her seatbelt off and yanks her arm away from his restraining hand, climbing out of the SUV and making for the stairs. “May!”

     Ward watches his rookie and wonders if she’ll ever be okay after this. Can people move past an experience of this magnitude? Or has Skye been changed forever?

***

“Are you going to kill him?” Skye asks May. Fitz looks on, with Jemma by his side.

     “I’m going to think about it,” May says bluntly.

     Skye looks around. “You’re all going?”

     “Yes, and you and Ward are staying behind,” Jemma supplies helpfully.

     Fitz sees the hacker clench her jaw, watches her eyes go dark. “Give him hell,” she says in a throttled voice.

     May places a hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. “Count on it.”

     They troop out of the plane in single file. Fitz looks back at Skye, who seems small and fragile, and wonders if May will let him punch the guy at least once.

     “This is what happens,” Coulson says as they walk.

     “What?”

     “This is what happens when people mess with our team.”

***

“You walked up by yourself today,” Ward comments as he and Skye arrive at the top of the stairs. “That’s a good sign, right?”

     “It’s a sign that I’m finally graduating back to my bunk,” she grins. “I missed all my stuff.”

     Ward has to admit, as he walks into her bunk, that she’s made the little room hers. It’s a cosy place, filled with the scent and idea of _Skye_ everywhere he turns. He wonders what would have happened if she’d died. Would this have become a shrine to her?

    He can’t think like this. She’s not dead, she’s standing right in front of him, warm and soft and _his_ , if he’s lucky.

     “Can I kiss you now?” he asks.

     She tosses a grin at him over her shoulder. “I’m surprised you bothered to wait for permission.”

     So he swoops in and presses their lips together again. It’s a relief, to be doing this – they’ve barely had five stolen minutes together since those first kisses and he’s been aching for her. It hurts under his ribcage. It might be his heart.

     At some point, they wind up lying on the bed next to each other.

     “Ward? Can I ask you something?”

     “Oh no, not this again,” he mock-groans, and Skye laughs and hits him.

     “Is this – are we – you know, a relationship?” She looks nervous, and backtracks hastily before we can answer. “I mean, I know guys don’t always like defining things, but just because of protocol, and stuff, and-”

     Ward cuts her off before she can dig herself into a hole. “We’re whatever you want us to be,” he promises. “If – _if_ it sounds right, then I want to be your boyfriend. Or your significant other.”

     “My SO,” she teases.

     “SHIELD agents are actually encouraged to date each other, you know,” he tells her. “It’s frowned upon a little bit between rookie and supervising officer, but this team is our family. Outside of them, we might keep it under wraps.”

     “I love you,” Skye says, “but I don’t know if I’m _in_ love with you. Does that make sense?”

     “Yes,” he says.

     “You feel familiar. You’re like my leg – or maybe more like my head. I couldn’t function without you-”

     “Oh, I’m sure you’d find some way to function without a head.”

     “-but I don’t feel, like, all-encompassing waves of fire or whatever when I look at you.” Skye frowns. “Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever really been in love at all. Maybe there’s something wrong with me.”

     Ward rolls his eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with you. Besides, we’re partners. We have a stronger bond than half of the couples I’ve ever met in my life.”

     “Yeah,” she says with relish.

     For a while after that, it’s just kissing again. Eventually Ward says, “I might be in love with you, though. Just a little bit.”

     “Just a little bit,” Skye agrees.

     The next time he speaks, almost twenty minutes has passed. His shirt mysteriously vanished in that time. “You know, we’re all alone on this plane.”

     “I am feeling a lot better.”

     Ward lifts his eyebrows. “We should probably… find something to do.”

     “Great!” Skye announces. “Let’s have sex.”

     He can’t help it. He bursts out laughing.

***

Jemma was the only one who didn’t hit the man. She… she couldn’t, and now she feels bad for it, like she cares about Skye the least, or something. That’s not true. She hated him when she looked at him, but she couldn’t _hurt_ him.

     May pulls her aside right before they walk back onto the bus. “I respect what you did,” she says in a low voice. “You know your own mind, Simmons. That’s just as brave.”

     Jemma smiles at her. She says, “Thanks,” and feels a bit better as they board the plane. Skye and Ward are waiting to greet them.

     “Did you have fun?” Skye asks jokingly.

     “You must be feeling better,” Jemma notes. “I’m sorry we took a while. Were you bored waiting?”

     For some reason, Skye looks up at Ward when she asks, and the corners of her mouth tweak. It’s almost like she’s trying not to smile. “Oh, yeah. We were just so bored, weren’t we Ward? There’s nothing to do on this plane.”

     “Nothing at all,” Ward agrees. His hair is… kind of messy. Jemma raises her eyebrows, but she doesn’t ask. If they were training in secret behind her back, then let them train. She’s not going to tell them off for it.

     “Skye is cleared for training, if you were wondering,” she tells them. Better not to let them worry.

     “Yeah,” Skye says. “I totally am, _if you know what I mean_.” She winks at Ward. He laughs. Jemma shakes it off as one of Skye’s many oddities (and there are many) and moves on.

     She’s somewhat surprised that neither of the pair asks for details about the mission as the day draws on. Something has changed. She doesn’t know what it is, but Skye and Ward seem content. They don’t seem to need anything extra.

     Fitz comes into her bunk later, shaking out his bruised hand. Jemma rubs a soothing ointment on it and says, “Do you think May should have killed that man?”

     “Logically, I think she did right,” Fitz says. “That man was a scourge of humanity and he didn’t deserve to live.”

     “But?” Jemma presses.

     Her lab partner sighs. “But I don’t think I could have done it.” He pauses. “May really is damaged, isn’t she?”

     “Yes,” Jemma says quietly. “But maybe she’s not as damaged as we think.” She gets off the bed and she and Fitz stand at the door of the bunk. May and Skye are standing in the kitchen, talking quietly to each other. “They’re a lot alike, you know.”

     “May and Skye?” Fitz chuckles. “No they’re not.”

     Jemma doesn’t want to argue, so she keeps quiet. Really, though, she knows she’s right. The same quiet strength resides within both women. May’s is external and so, so obvious. Skye’s is quiet and shines bright inside her. The strength, though, is the same.

***

“You’re sleeping with Ward,” May tells her when they meet in the kitchen.

     Skye’s not going to do this woman the dishonour of lying to her. “Yes,” she says.

     To her surprise, May smiles. “Good. He needs someone like you.”

     “What about – weren’t you and he…?”

     “It’s different,” May tells her. “I think he was waiting for you.”

     “Thank you.”

     “For what, not being jealous of Ward? He’s not _that_ great.”

   Skye almost laughs. She almost laughs at May. Wow, she thinks, they’ve made progress. “No, not for that. Thank you for – for doing what I couldn’t do. For killing that man so that I didn’t have to.”

     “There are a lot of people who would kill for you, Skye,” May says. “That’s what family means.”

     “I know,” Skye murmurs, almost whispers. “I understand it now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's it, folks! Another story bites the dust! *ahem* I mean, another story is successfully completed. Yeah. That.
> 
> Thanks so much for all the kudos and comments that have been left! I was absurdly inspired for this one and I really liked the way it turned out - but even the satisfaction I get from just writing the thing cannot compare to how amazing it is to see OTHER PEOPLE who like it. I am just... wow. So thank you all! :D


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